Thruuummm . . . thwack. Thruuummm . . . thwack. One after another, the arrows fly, straight and true with monotonous accuracy, always the same. Over and over the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl pulls the string back until it cuts into her chin. The eyes narrow, the jaw lifts slightly, almost arrogantly, and . . . thruuummm . . . the arrow flies and strikes the target, thwack. She shoots six arrows steadily and methodically, ambles to the target to retrieve them, then returns precisely to the spot where two footprints are crushed into the grass, and shoots again, and so the process begins once more, just as it has for eight years.
Can this really be her? The braces are gone. The hair is shorter and permed. But, yes, it's her. Little Denise Parker is all grown up. She's 18, and you feel older just thinking about it, don't you? Egads, she even carries a daytimer. She got her driver's license and her braces off all in one day ("Definitely one of my favorite days," she tells you). She drives a red compact and is headed to college next fall, to Southern Utah University.Denise has grown up right before our (public) eyes. She has been featured in and/or appeared on the cover of Life, People, Parade, Sports Illustrated, Time and Newsweek, making her the most written about archer since Robin Hood. She has competed in two World Championships, two Pan American Games and one Olympics and soon will compete in another. She's appeared on the Today Show, the Will Schreiner Show, That's Incredible and the Tonight Show. She's met Reagan and received mail from Bush. In the meantime, she's traveled to China, Venezuela, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Poland, Russia.
And she's just 18.
She draws and fires again, thruuummm, her face serene and nonchalant, as if she's doing nothing more than needlepoint. It is a sunny June morning in South Jordan, and Parker is shooting alone in the expansive back yard of a neighbor's home. "I concentrate more," she says. "If people are around, it's like I'm just flinging arrows." So she comes here where the only sounds are an occasional plane droning overhead and the chirping of birds and crickets in a nearby field. She shoots for two hours in the morning - or about 150 arrows - then returns in the evening for another session. Although she usually trains alone, throughout the year she will rendezvous with her coach, Tim Strickland, either staying at his home in Indiana for a week or so or meeting him in Salt Lake City.
Parker is preparing for the Olympics, where, unlike '88, she will be more than a novelty for spectators curious about the little American girl who was then the youngest competitor of the entire Games. Bigger, stronger, older, she is a bona fide medal contender this time. In the last Olympics, at the age of 14, she finished 21st. A year later she competed against the same field in the World Championships and finished third. At last year's World Championships she was sixth. And at Barcelona? Some experts have picked her to finish out of the medals; Sports Illustrated has picked her to win the silver medal.
"I've never seen her hungrier," said Strickland after a recent two-week training session at his home. "We'd be out shooting, and I'd say, Let's take a break and go play some golf - she loves golf. But she'd say, Nah. I thought, Holy cow, she means business. She's got it in her eye."
That's Parker for you. Underneath the cool exterior has always burned the raging intensity and competitiveness of a fighter. Isn't that how this whole archery business began in the first place? The story is fairly well known by now. Earl Parker, an avid bowhunter, noticed that other families hunted together and decided the Parkers should do the same. They began practicing archery, and one thing led to another. A few months later they wound up at an archery tournament in Ogden merely for the practice of shooting at targets. Denise, 10 years old, finished second in the junior division. She lost to a boy. None of this was acceptable. On the drive home she stewed. The family had planned to take a fishing trip the following week, but in the car she begged off.
"I want to beat that boy," she said. During the next few days she practiced in the back yard, and a week later she beat the boy and won the state junior title.
That was all it took. She was hooked and a star was born. In 1986, just two years after taking up the sport, she was the U.S. junior (19 and under) champion. In 1987, she competed again in the junior division of the national championships. She not only won the junior title, but she outscored all of the senior women and all but 11 of the men. Later that year, at the age of 13, she won the Pan Am Games, beating women twice her age.
Now she's on the threshhold of adulthood, and what chance do her rivals have in the coming years? The added years have only made things easier for Parker. For one thing, the equipment finally fits her - the bow is no longer taller than she is. More important, she can handle a stronger bow. In her early years, at about 4-foot-10 and 72 pounds, she could handle a pull of only 20 pounds, and even at the '88 Games she used a mere 26-pound bow, all of which put her at a big disadvantage against her bigger, older rivals and their 35-pound pulls. To reach the target from 60 and 70 meters, Parker had to put considerably more arch on her shots, which made aiming more difficult and her arrows more vulnerable to wind. After Parker won her first indoor title, some observers (including her father) wondered if she could shoot as effectively outdoors where wind was a factor.
"But she plunked them in there," recalls Earl. "She had a helluva'n arch. It was a rainbow."
"Her arrows were up there forever," says Strickland. "The wind affected them. There was wind in Korea (at the Olympics), and it really cost her."
Parker, who is 5-6, 125 pounds, shoots about 341/2 pounds now. Look out, world. Little Denise has caught up.
She is the youngest of three children, but for all practical purposes Denise, born well after her brothers, was raised an only child. Her father Charles died when she was three, and so she never knew him. Earl, a printer for the Deseret News, has been her attentive and devoted father and for a time was her coach until they both realized it was stressful to their relationship. Then he wisely and sportingly stepped aside and brought in Strickland.
As the only child still living at home, Denise tagged along everywhere with her parents. When they went golfing, rode motorcycles or ran in road races, she was right there with them. She was rarely left behind with a baby sitter. Her exposure to the adult world of her parents probably served her later as an archer.
It has never been easy being The Kid. Some of her adult rivals on the archery circuit resented her precociousness and its accompanying media and fan attention. They gave her the cold shoulder or worse, but she understood.
"A lot of them hated me," she recalls. "They didn't like it that a 13-year-old beat them when they had been shooting for a lifetime."
Extensive trips with the national team only exacerbated the problem. Here she was, 13, 14, 15 years old, and when she wasn't competing she was forced to hang out with thirty- and forty-something adults.
"I never fit in," she says. "I just barely do now. We didn't like the same things. They wanted to go sightseeing or something. I wanted to wrestle."
Some of her teammates accommodated her wonderfully. Luann Ryon, the 1976 Olympic champion, was Parker's roommate during the '87 Pan Ams. The age difference was more than two decades, but they hit it off. There was no resentment, but there was a hotel-room water fight.
Over the years Parker has spent much of the summer and spring on the road, traveling to, competing in or training for competitions, which means more time with adults and their world. Normally quiet and reserved anyway, she developed a certain rapport with her elders. Ed Eliason, a renowned archer himself from Salt Lake City, recalls getting advice from the 13-year-old Parker while struggling at the '87 Pan Am Trials, when he was 49.
"I was moping around with a scowl on my face and all of a sudden Denise tells me, `Hey, dude, you're looking a little tight to me. Your release is coming from your face, and you're dropping your bow.' I improved those two things and ended up beating two of the best archers in the world (and finished second)."
Well, we are, after all, talking about a girl who once turned down an invitation to appear on the Tonight Show because, as she explained to the caller, she was going bowhunting with her family (her incredulous mother told her to call right back and accept).
Parker has always been an athlete. She played sandlot football, soccer, softball and basketball with the boys in the neighborhood and held her own. She started for two years on the Bingham High soccer team and won first-team all-region honors. She started at point guard on the Bingham basketball team for three years, earning second-team all-state honors and a state championship. She hopes to try out for the SUU basketball team next fall. Others who have seen her swing a club wonder if Parker shouldn't take up golf seriously instead. She shoots in the 40s consistently, and occasionally in the low 40s.
"She was always the sort of kid who could not stand to lose at anything," says Valerie, Denise's mother. "If you were walking down a hall with her, she would walk in the middle and not let you by."
Earl remembers seeing Denise finish a road race once with only one shoe. She explained that the shoe had come off during the race, but she hadn't taken time to put it back on because "I didn't want the other girls to get ahead of me." She was eight years old.
"I remember one shoot, she was having trouble," says Earl. "She turned and looked at me, and she had a tear in her eye. She turned back around and shot beautifully."
"I think the reason she's done so well in school is because of her competitiveness," says Valerie. "She wants to do well in everything."
Denise graduated from Bingham with a 3.8 cumulative grade point average. Only once has she received a grade lower than a B. She got a C in calculus - and was devastated.
"The teacher had to sit her down and tell her `You're going to live through this,' " says Valerie.
Strickland used to marvel at Parker's discipline and maturity at archery training camps. During breaks from shooting, instead of playing basketball with the rest of the kids she would lie on the floor and do her homework.
For all of her singlemindedness and athleticism, Parker's greatest talent might not be so obvious. Strickland believes that her uncanny ability to concentrate under pressure is what sets her apart.
During one competition the wind gusted while Parker was shooting and flipped over several large umbrellas that were being used for shade. "Did you see that?" someone asked Parker after she was finished shooting. Parker didn't know what she was talking about. She had been focused only on the target.
"Under the pressure of competition she is able to perform in a subconscious state," says Strickland. "Very few people can do that. To function well in sports, you need to able to let the subconscious work. You have to have faith that you know enough to function right. Doubts and indecision come from the conscious or mind level. It tells you to be careful, to hold still or you'll miss. You use the conscious level to concentrate on something - in archery, it's the target - and let the sub-conscious do the rest. Denise does this very well."
Thus, Parker's unique shooting style. She shoots quickly in competition, releasing about three arrows to her rivals' one.
"She believes in herself," says Strickland. "There is no need to take time."
Translation: The Kid is mentally tough. That was perhaps never more evident than on her prime time TV appearances. She was so nervous while waiting offstage to appear on the Tonight Show that she couldn't get a glass of water to her mouth because her hand was shaking so violently.
"I was nervous about the shots they wanted me to do," recalls Parker. "I'm not a trick shooter. Then I went out and I was totally relaxed."
With cameras and a studio audience watching, she was challenged to shoot a series of small objects. Shooting from a distance of 30 feet, she silenced a ringing alarm clock, then pierced a tomato and an egg on her first attempts. Then the grand finale: a Life Saver. "I didn't get nervous again until the Life Saver bit," she says, but she nailed it on her first try.
That experience was nothing compared to the challenge of her That's Incredible appearance. Much to her dismay, she discovered too late that the show biz folks had suspended a Life Saver from a string that was attached to a helium-filled balloon on one end and to the floor on the other. And the air conditioner was on and blowing.
"The balloon was moving," she says. "I almost stopped and said You must be kidding. There's no way. It was being taped, but it would be embarrassing to have to shoot it over with a studio audience there. I thought, well, I'll just try it; if I miss, I can ask them to change it."
She hit the candy on the first try.
"I was totally lucky," says Parker. "I'll admit it right here."
Maybe, but it was with the same kind of nerve that she handled the crush of attention as a little girl. Stickland recalls, "In '87 and '88 she competed in seven events and won them all with cameras literally in her face all the time and people surrounding her. And she never faltered. She shot better."
The Parkers have done their part to strengthen Denise's strength. They hired a sports psychologist, whom she continues to see when she feels the need, and the family practices as a group to develop her powers of concentration and a positive mental approach. Earl, Valerie and Denise sit in their living room together, close their eyes and visualize things they want to happen in their lives or in their shooting. Or they turn on the TV and radio full volume while Denise reads a book, practicing her powers of concentration and her ability to block distractions.
Parker will need all of her mental skills at the upcoming Olympics, which will employ a new scoring system that is nothing if not a test of nerves. The first two days will consist of qualifying shoots - 72 arrows each day - which will seed shooters for a single-elimination, head-to-head medal round that was adopted to increase suspense and spectator interest. Archers get 12 arrows and one contestant each match. One loss and they're out.
"The difference between the worst and the best shooters isn't much," says Strickland. "One mistake and you could be gone. Anything can happen now."
No matter what happens, the Parkers have no complaints. "Archery has been very good for Denise," says Valerie. "The experiences have been phenomenal for a young girl." Parker will probably continue her career for another Olympics, but beyond that who knows? "It depends on what happens in my life," she says.
In other words, she'll check the daytimer after '96 and get back to you. By then, she might be aiming at new challenges. Thruuummm . . . thwack.
*****
(Chart)
Target
-Target face: Cloth or paper. Ten circles colored white, black, blue, red, gold.
-Set at 15-degree angle.
-Target diameter: 122 cm in for two longer distances with a 4.8 inch bullseye.
-80 cm for two shorter distances with a 3.5-inch bullseye.
-Made of compressed straw rope.
At 90 meters, bullseye compares in size to a thumbtack held at arm's length.
Bow
Recurve bow: Limb tips curve away from archer to add power. As string is drawn back, curves straighten and provide leverage.
Sight apparatus: Aids in aiming.
Stabilizers: Release twisting motion upon release.
Strings: Hydrocarbon product or kevlar, the material used for bullet-proof vests.
The field
Individual
Preliminary rounds (Two days):
Total of 144 arrows each (36 arrows per distance).
Men: 30m, 50m, 70m and 90m
Women: 30m 50m, 60m and 70m
Elimination rounds:
Top 32 men and 32 women will be placed on a single elimination draw sheet.
Total of 12 arrows per match at 70 m.
Team
-Top 16 teams (3 archers) selected from the two day preliminary rounds.
-Single elimination match play, total of 27 arrows per match, 9 per archer.
Sources: National Archery Association of the United States, Archery. Steps to Success, Summer GAmes Access, Barcelona Olympic Committee, Eyewitness Books Sports What's What in Sports.